DailyDirt: Animals Behave Like People Sometimes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Animal behavior is getting more and more attention as researchers discover that our animal friends exhibit emotional responses seemingly similar to ours. It's hard to "prove" animals experience complex emotions or thoughts (in fact, you never prove anything in science... you can only disprove things), but mounting evidence seems to suggest that many animals have reactions that we might predict based on our own psychological knowledge. Here are just a few interesting studies on animals acting like us somehow. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: animals, behavior, chimpanzees, dogs, elephants, emotions, mice, pets, psychology, ptsd


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  • identicon
    Pixelation, 17 Sep 2014 @ 6:14pm

    "Animals Behave Like People Sometimes"

    Good thing people never behave like animals...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    NCPTSD (profile), 17 Sep 2014 @ 8:32pm

    of course

    this isn't news at all, i've had dogs all my life. My one dog instantly gets jealous when i'm petting the other and jumps in front to get affection.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    tomczerniawski, 18 Sep 2014 @ 5:47am

    Dogs feel every emotion we do. They just don't realize it, having never invented therapists.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    JoeDetroit (profile), 18 Sep 2014 @ 5:57am

    Human Exceptionalism?

    Why would humans be the only animal that feels emotion? I was taught way back in grade school that emotions are what separated us from "the beasts". Happy, sad, humor, jealousy, anger, I believe most animals feel all of them. It's just very hard to detect in the animal kingdom.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Art Dibbs, 18 Sep 2014 @ 1:41pm

    Animals can and do sense humans' emotions and state of mind extremely well. A number of dog trainers can make them do things without visible signs. Humans also are able to learn these techniques - there is nothing magic or super-natural in it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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